The whole recent Bud Light/Coors Light controversy reminded me of a mystery I never fully grokked which is how light beer became a part of the conservative, rural, rugged, outdoor, manly man identity.
If you had asked me naively, I would have said of course light beer would be the choice of women and those limp wristed metrosexual urban effete who can’t handle the taste and strength of real beer and would be the object of mockery and derision by those “real America” hard working salt of the earth folk who would be downing double IPAs as befits a real man.
And yet the complete opposite is the case, IPAs are the urban, sophisticated drink and light beer is, or was as of last month, the drink of choice for the likes of Kid Rock.
Anybody able to shed light on how this came to be?
My SWAG is that the beer swillers on the right think that only hipsters and wusses drink craft beers or imports. I’m sure that Bud, Coors and all the others who make tasteless pisswater have, at least subtly, reinforced that notion. I actually had a Hamm’s beer a few weeks ago. I didn’t even know they still made that stuff. Tasted just as nasty as I remember it from my teen years.
Having lived and played extensively in such regions (Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana) I can assure you it’s an economic choice rather than one of taste. The lowest cost per cooler is the goal.
The “light” part of the equation is often due to bikini-clad guests on the boat, who are convinced it’s less of a threat to their figures. For deer season, we’ve developed a variety of wimmenfolk-resistant architecture, so us manly types can switch back to plain Bud or Miller for the duration. [Burp]
I suspect, some level of realization that, if you’re going to drink beers all day/evening, and you’re doing it for the buzz, rather than for the flavor, it’s not a bad idea to consume fewer calories in the process.
This might be traced, in part, back to the long-running ad campaign for Miller Lite, back in the 1970s and 1980s, which featured a large number of popular (though retired) sports figures, as well as “macho” figures like mystery writer Mickey Spillane.
Assuming the OP’s assumption is correct, I imagine it started with the series of highly successful Miller Lite “tastes great!” “Less filling!” ads beginning in the 70s and starring a number of retired athletes over the years. They went a long a way toward not only introducing the concept of light beer to the American consumer market, but making it acceptable to blue collar “manly” men.
LOL I come from the Rochester NY area, Genesee is the local brewery, and Genny Cream Ale is the cheap swill of choice there. I was flabbergasted to walk into a bar in Norfolk VA to discover it was a premium beer … I have no doubt Hamm’s still tastes like piss I find most beers taste nasty [I really dislike beer actually] the tendency of corporations is to cut costs as much as possible, so anything that started out 100 years ago is no longer following the same recipe.
I occasionally dabble in r/conservative [think that is the sub] and they are freaking insane. Maybe a few comments are sensible, but on the whole they all need a psych hold. [mainly keeping track of what crap they are pushing out, I need ot know who to avoid!]
I’ve seen repeated examples, over the years, of regionally-distributed beers, which are considered to be mediocre, at best, by the locals, developing a premium cachet among people in other areas, who can’t easily get it.
Back in the '70s, when Coors wasn’t distributed east of the Mississippi, it had that cachet (to the point that it’s the MacGuffin in Smokey and the Bandit); when I was in college in Wisconsin in the '80s, the Chicago kids had that same sort of obsession about Point Beer, from Stevens Point.
I don’t know how widely my perception is shared, but in my personal perception, Bud Light/Coors Light/Miller Light is to regular Budweiser/Coors/Miller as diet soda is to regular soda. You want to drink something, but you could do without all those extra calories.
Diet sodas used to be marketed more toward women, but I don’t think that’s true anymore (although I haven’t been paying a lot of attention). The diet or light version may not be marketed as especially rugged and manly (with some exceptions), but I think they try to market it so it has as broad an appeal as possible. And the same is true of light beer (again, in my perception, though I haven’t been paying close attention).
The word “diet” in foods and beverages has long had an association with being targeted towards women, and a lot of men seem to shy away from those products, for that reason. It’s part of why the soft-drink industry has, for more recent introductions, used the words “Zero,” “Zero Calorie,” or “Zero Sugar” in their branding. Coke Zero is a different product than Diet Coke, and has more of a masculine positioning.
Yeah, my wife and I popped into a rather hip Neapolitan pizza place many years back in Michiana Shores, Indiana, to find Genesee Cream Ale being sold at premium prices on the menu. She’s from Buffalo, so was quite familiar with the beer, and literally guffawed when she saw this: “What the hell? They have Jenny here? For how much?” At any rate, it was a perfectly serviceable, clean-tasting beer.
Yeah, I seem to remember it being explained to me that that is why we briefly had those “ten” drinks, because “diet” was considered femme, or something.
My (limited) experience is that these guys (yes, always guys) want to drink all day and not get too fucked up. I.E. they’re going to have a beer in hand all day and if it was full strength they’d fall down. This includes people I have known doing activities like skiing, dirt biking, MTB… Not my gig.
I’ve never understood why anybody drinks it. You’re consuming alcohol, for cryin’ out loud, not sipping tea. I think I may have tried one of them many years ago, and quickly swore off it for life. When I returned to the states in about 1990, after living in Europe for six or seven years, I nearly came to tears when I found out that microbreweries and craft beers were now a thing in the US.
I’m not sure I understand this statement. People drink wine, scotch, bourbon, tequila, and other forms of alcohol where they are particular about the taste. Why would beer be any different?
And this IS America after all. No one is holding a gun to your head to drink a pint of Imperial IPA or Saison.